


saltwater said

by gimmeshellder



Series: saltwater said [1]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Accidental Self-Harm, College, F/F, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 02:11:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4373213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gimmeshellder/pseuds/gimmeshellder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>College AU. Pearl gets her crush up to her room, with mixed results.</p>
            </blockquote>





	saltwater said

The last time she'd peeled her cuticles was high school, in her first roll with the SAT. Hours and nights spent doubled over practice tests like she had a sucking chest wound had all culminated into a look of whole, perfect disgust on the test proctor’s face.

“What are you  _doing?_ ” she’d hissed, and the polynomials Pearl’s brain had been juggling spilled sideways. Her mouth had gaped, even making a frail little ‘pop’ sound, and her entire face roared with heat and her belly bricked as she finally felt the tacky patch of blood on her hand, her desk, her answer sheet.

Pearl had kept the habit tamped down a good bundle of years, through fencing captain, college apps, dance showcases, and her parents playing catch with custody. Her nailbeds thanked her for it. (Her piano teacher, too – Pearl’d stopped staining the keys so often.)

But meeting Rose had dredged the habit up, and intercepting her after dress rehearsal to lure her to Pearl’s room – _her room_  – has it gasping back to life on the hook.

“I guess my roommate’s… still out!” Pearl laughs, a little too loud, a little too forced, and bites her lip. She had bribed her, of course. Bought her out for the afternoon with a freebie coffee and a promise to return the favor one day, if she ever needed. 

A big ‘if.’ Lapis usually comes in exhausted – too late, or too early – all grubby and slaughtered with watercolor, and she’s kind of a bitch to be honest, but it’s an arts college, and miracles can happen.

Pearl fidgets and scrabbles her brain for something else to say.  2 p.m. pours in languid through the windows, warm and lion-colored, and the sight may have inspired her if not for all the dustmotes.

Her fingertip follows a thumbnail. She starts to chuckle, but doesn’t quite finish. “Wish she was a bit tidier.”

Damn it, has she even _looked_ at Rose since they stepped inside? She peers over, all nerves, and her chest shifts by funny inches like her ribs are wringing themselves at the Riesling curve of shoulder. Rose has on another sundress today – a whirly, sherbet pastel – and Pearl struggles not to stare.  

Rose leans; she’s reaching for the shelf of photos, which Pearl has carefully arranged and rearranged these two weeks since semester’s start. They’re mostly of Pearl herself, with friends or mentors, and maybe a few nostalgic spots back home. The ones with her parents have been carefully stuck in a drawer somewhere. No need for awkward questions.

“Can I see?” Rose turns her chin as she asks, smiling, and Pearl’s stomach twists in delight. “I’ll be careful!”

“Of course.”

Ridiculous. That sounds ridiculous. Like she’s a businessman on a crime drama, or a grandmother.

Rose seems uncaring, though, and picks up a picture of – dammit, she should have stowed that one, too. Pearl winces. It’s her, from junior year of high school. A team member with a taste for candids had taken it at a competition, right after she’d wrestled out of her fencing mask. She was flushed handsomely, posture proud – a pensive gaze leveled at something to her left – but also making a sloppy show of shouldering sweat from her cheek. Her hair was mussed murderously, too: all sticky chunks and licks of ginger duckfluff. Not the most flattering shot, but every time Pearl thinks to stick it in storage, something stops her.

Rose seems to appreciate the failure.

“Oooh, look how dashing!” She tips the frame for a closer look, then slides her grin back at Pearl. “So that’s always been there, huh?” 

Her eyebrow tips, playful, and invisible hands grab around Pearl’s middle and  _squeeze_. “You did fencing  _and_  dance in high?”

“A-and piano,” Pearl answers, a bit too quickly. Shit. She scratches idly at an itch on her thumb. Rose turns away to replace the frame, and Pearl is helpless to stop her eyeline from tracing the bare backs of her calves.

“How on Earth did you have time for all of that?”

“The secret is to not be very good at any of them.”

Rose _laughs_ and smiles over her shoulder and it feels like fresh, honeyed victory. Pearl’s lips tingle. She feels less silly about rehearsing that line in the shower.

“I somehow doubt that,” Rose hums. It’s a creamy, heart-shaped sound that Pearl immediately decides she needs to hear again.

Rose picks up another frame. Panic plucks at Pearl’s ribs as Rose smooths her dress down the backs of her thighs – her  _thighs_ – and settles herself on Pearl’s bed ( _her **bed!**_ ), lips tilted fondly at the picture. Her eyes are licorice-dark, and warm, and it’s good. “Now, _this_  is a bestie pic if I’ve ever seen one.”

It’s Pearl and Amethyst, on the boardwalk. Their legs are spilled in each other’s laps, jostling for elbow room on the cement divider. It was taken in February, so tourist traffic was nonexistent, but Amethyst had still managed to find a place selling snowcones in the 40 degree weather. The half she hadn’t manage to eat had been wasted in teasing Pearl.

She can’t remember who took the picture – it was one of those mishmash, come-who-may sort of outings – and anyway had been far too busy wallpapering Amethyst’s wrists with flimsy napkins as sticky orange slop spilled along her arm. The mystery photographer had captured Amethyst laughing, and Pearl trying not to.

“We were still together at that point, actually.” Pearl surprises herself when she half-settles on the bed next to Rose without incident – foot of space between them notwithstanding. She joins in looking down at the photo, leaning partway across the buffer she’s made. “But everyone at home agrees with you. I guess we always were.” She grins a bit, shyness tugging. “Best friends, I mean.”

Not at first, of course. The two are practically opposites. They had  _hated_  each other for the first month of sophomore year. Amethyst was a shitty chemistry partner, slovenly and forgetful, but held a wealth of insight within the realm of home troubles. And so starting from the day she'd found Pearl with her face leaking like a skinned knee in the back of the library, Amethyst had shaped out a safe place to curl up inside of her. Had practically carried her through that spring semester.

Much later, senior year, they’d decided to give the whole dating thing a try before going back to friends, just in time for prom. Then right after was college... Ame had bawled her damn eyes out the day she left for school upstate. Had made Pearl promise not to let “some basket-weaving fucklet” take her place as bestie.

(They still talked on the phone at least twice a week, though, and still had school breaks, so things were just fine. Better than fine.)

“It’s a good picture.” Rose jars her into the present again. She’s studying the photo carefully, smiling small; so Pearl studies Rose, trying to read her expression. “You two seem so different…”

She blinks up, surprised, when Pearl stammers out a laugh.

The sound comes as a shock for Pearl, too, honestly. It’s the first time she’s laughed in front of Rose that wasn’t out of nerves. “God, you have  _no idea._  The picture really doesn’t do it justice – the girl’s a twelve-car pileup with legs –”

Pearl’s almost certain that it’s horrible form to invite your crush to your room to talk about your ex. She can’t help it, though. Thinking about Amethyst is soothing; thinking about her feels good. Thinking about Amethyst might be exactly what will relax Pearl enough that she can string together subjects and predicates in some  _semblance_  of a human conversation.

She leans over the picture again. For a moment she’s trying to ignore the warmth pouring off of Rose –  _on her **bed!**  _– but that becomes easier when Pearl revives the events of that February in her mind. A grounding effect, almost. She smiles, remembering, but then just barely resists a sigh: that sweater  _still_  had a stain. “We’re still really close friends.”

That picture had been just a few months before prom. They’d skipped out on the last half in favor of a dive bar crawl, followed by a late-night diner marathon, and then a beach party crash and seaside skinny-dipping. If Pearl had one night to relive it would be that one. The distant bonfire had been like a nightlight for the two of them as they crawled out of the water, half-beaching themselves in the soft shelf of shore and howling that  _awful_ synthschlock pop song that  _hounded_  them through every damn radio station they flipped to, their toes in the sand twisting kiddish and good. Every part of them felt good. 

They’d kissed in the dark, there – best friends again – blinking seawater away and taking turns laughing into each other’s lips.

“Do all your friends make you smile like that?”

Pearl balks. Her face itches, hot and spidery, and she looks over to Rose just for a moment before she turns away again. 

 _God, wake up._  She opens her mouth and lamely closes it.

The boldest part of Pearl – the part of her that Amethyst could goad into late-night joyrides at three in the illegal morning – wants to snap that question up like bait. Wants to turn it around with a line like,  _‘Why – would you like to be friends, too?’_ or _‘I bet you could get more than just a smile.’_ Something that would make Pearl’s intentions extremely explicit and get a fluster from Rose, besides.

Her chin rises, deliberate, and she opens her mouth but is cut off.

“Oh, I see, now –” Pearl must have taken too long because Rose leans forward, with a wink and a grin, “– so you like ‘em chubby, huh?”

Heat steeltraps her belly and brain all ropy thick and itch and nerves that  _roar._

“Oh, hon, I’m only teasing – oh no,  _come back!_ ” She’s laughing, laughing, and it fills up Pearl’s whole head, even with Rose’s arms lassoed soft around her hips, trying to tug her back to bed. 

Pearl’s insides are chunks of wiggling ice and her head is red-pounding like a boxer’s bag and she’s  _mortified_ , it’s  _hell_ , but Rose’s arms are around her, and Rose – she’s coaxing her back, she  _wants_  Pearl next to her – Rose is laughing still and, like milk, and honey, it’s – and it fills up her whole head, and – and – it’s good.

“I’m sorry!” Rose bubbles gorgeous and warm into her shoulder, not sounding sorry in the least. The foot of space between them is long gone: Pearl’s in her lap, nearly. She can feel Rose’s chest against her back, humming with speech. “I’m only teasing… I didn’t mean it  _mean_.”

She smells incredible. Pearl’s mouth waters, but it might be from how hard she’s biting her lip. Her face is a ripe hive of color and heat, she knows, and she can feel the seam of Rose’s smile against her shoulder, and: her chest... Pearl’s chest is tight. Rose’s breath makes the downy little hairs on her neck shiver as she goes on: “I wouldn’t tease if I didn’t like that you like me.”

Hands, soft and full, find Pearl’s – fold over them, cover them – press them against the bruise-colored quake and churn in her belly. They hold, there. Her murmur is a pour of liquid fleece: pink tickle of windchime: small, sweet things to eat. “I wouldn’t tease if I didn’t like you back.”

The hideous and absurd child in Pearl demands  _But do you **like-** like me?_ and she tries to lock it away somewhere secret. Rose is clearly here – _on her bed_  – with her arms haloed glowing-good around her waist. 

Rose is _here_ ; Rose has made out with Pearl after  _both_  of their rehearsals, has simmered her a look from across the rabble of an afterparty and coaxed her backstage to dig devilish teeth into her neck. Has slipped hands along the miserable geometry of Pearl’s ass to toy with the fabric of her jeans, sighing against her cheek (impish, dreamlike, heart-stopping): “Skirt, next time, please.”

Pearl swallows. It’s like sipping caltrops.

The hold around her relaxes when Pearl tugs away, meek, and settles back next to Rose. Hip-to-hip, this time. 

She feels for all the world a stranger on her own bed.

“I’m sorry,” Pearl hears herself, after a pause, “It’s just...” She licks her lips. Studies her socks. “I’m just nervous.”

She only now notices Rose’s hand blanketing hers. The touch is soft, and cool. A plump thumb smooths along her knuckles, and Pearl relaxes the fist she hadn’t felt herself make.  

She flickers the pad of her thumb along Rose’s palm, wary.

“Do I make you nervous?”

“Everything makes me nervous,” Pearl mumbles. It’s mostly true. And before she can stop herself: “Pretty girls, especially.”

Rose laughs again – so much _closer_ this time – and Pearl’s head whirs something airy-warm, the color of tea. It’s good. When Rose nudges her with her curve of shoulder, some thick loop of ghost wire snares Pearl around her waist, right between belly and breast, digging greedy.

“Oh, check  _this_  smooth operator! Did I ever stand a chance?” Rose’s purr carries her grin, but Pearl can’t bring herself to look but for a moment. 

It’s a mistake. In that scant gleam of a second, Rose sees her opening. She leans closer, voice sweeping black and low: “You already  _have_  me on your bed, sweetheart.”

The words feel like scent-marking – like a happy cat, braiding between Pearl’s calves – and the loop of ghost wire thickens to a noose.

None of this is going as planned. She had begun to practice talking to Rose like prepping for a big upcoming showcase or audition from the start, watching her hold court on the quad with her flock of admirers. Other actors, mostly, but all of them just like Pearl: caught up in whatever hypnosis or gravity or witchcraft Rose holds over people. 

She knew she needed to talk to her at first sight. She  _knew._

Rose had had her legs folded up effortless in the grass as some linty mullethead walked her through guitar chords, and Pearl watched from yards and yards away – already trying on different greetings.  _(Hello, I don’t believe we’ve met. Your dress is lovely, where did you get it? Would you like to get out of the sun?)_

But she should have accounted for this better. She should have realized how fast she’d run out of things to say, especially –  _especially_ with Rose on her  _bed_  –

Pearl’s miniature meltdown must be apparent because Rose has mercy, and brings up Amethyst again. She pulls away just a mite to give back the space she’d leaned into. “You know, I wasn’t really intending to follow you to your room to grill you about your exes.” 

She laughs low, and favors Pearl with a gentle, chamomile look. Like she hadn’t just said… what she’d just said. Every word from her with those licorice eyes shuttered low settles warm and winding in the bowl of Pearl’s hips: hand-delivered and sealed with a kiss.

Pearl’s throat clicks as she swallows. 

Rose fails to notice. She goes on, caramel-warm, “But you learn a lot about someone, hearing them talk about friends.”

_Ah. Oh._

Self-consciousness guts a speedy swathe up Pearl’s middle. She should have been more generous, talking about Amethyst. She had only had a minute or two – it’s hard! Their relationship is a very complex, very layered one! (And the first layer happens to be amicable irritation.)

“What,” Pearl clears her throat. It’s gummy, from her mouth – constantly flipping between filled with saliva and dry as jury duty. “What h-have you learned so far?”

She steals a glance of Rose’s face as she looks to the ceiling, like she’s watching the question be weighed. Even in profile, she’s dangerous. Stunning.

Just. She’s just stunning. 

Whatever she washes with must cost the moon. Something custom-made: sugared tea: vanilla bone: summer fruit: Pearl can’t tell, but she can smell it, from this close: her head fills with it: it blankets every other thought she’s holding in a milky, cashmere lull. There’s no room for much else. 

Some needy, mongrel thing paws at the inside of Pearl’s chest.

Rose catches her looking – winks at her sideways – and Pearl drops her eyes again. Hot, useless mouth.

“That  _youuu_ … care, very much.” Rose loops circles on the back of Pearl’s hand again. It quiets some parts of her; it riles others. “Even if letting it show can be tricky.”

Her thumb whirls one way, and then the other, soft. She’s tracing comforting nonsense. Pearl watches. She watches the hand cupping hers, and wills the ghost wire to go slack, and begs the stray in her chest to stifle its whines.

“That you… have a hard time, maybe,” Rose murmurs, corduroy low, “asking for what you want.”

She… she’s pleading. With her eyes. Pleading with Pearl to look at her. Her head is tilting with quiet hunger and gentle promise and she’s leaning closer and she’s _pleading_  and Pearl: she: Pearl relents. 

Pearl gives in. She gives that, to her. 

 _Her._  To Rose.

Rose wins her line of sight, and her eyes drink her in, and the mattress creaks easy as she leans.

“That you’re a little lonely.”

She’s almost – with her lips, she’s still – leaning, into her. Into Pearl, and. Her lips, she –  _Rose_  –

Fresh pain what the _fuck_  like a pint of hornet’s nest snarls oxblood and asphalt up her other arm and Pearl yelps, yellow-chirping what the fuck (what the  _fuck!_ ) jerking hard away and stumbling off the bed onto the hardwood floor. She looks down at her arm all heavy-hot with hurt and her lungs tug ugly at the air and her stomach bricks and she wants to cry, a little.

_God, please – **please,** not  **now** –_

The hand Rose has been babying is well-behaved, but the other one – Pearl’s  _fencing_  hand – her nails have  _butchered_  a sticking red cleft into the skin of her thumb, the nerves clamoring hateful. The web of flesh between her thumb and palm is tacky red, has stained her bedspread, most likely –

“I’m so sorry,” Pearl chokes (stupid!  _stupid!_ ), face smearing hot and she piles to her feet ( _stupid! stupid!_ ), she can’t bear to even look at Rose. She stilts herself shaky and her legs eat up two jerky strides to the bathroom door, already picturing the slam and lock and rinse and wait for however long it takes for Rose to leave ( _ **stupid!**_ ) but she stumbles and –  _soft,_  humming- _warm_  –  _Rose_ , Rose is what catches her.

Pearl hadn’t even felt herself screw her eyes shut but when Rose cloaks around her she shuts them even tighter.

“ _Shhhh_ , sh-sh-shhh, let me see –” Gentle pressure takes up her elbow and she doesn’t resist. “– oh – oh,  _Pearl_  –”

She makes this – this  _heartbreaking_  sound, Pearl feels it shrink the sick puddle of her belly, and Rose shepherds her to the bathroom: to the sink: to cool, running water. 

It _stings_ and a moan crawls out of Pearl and from behind her, Rose presses her lips to her temple, and.

And. It works.

It works, and Pearl feels herself go quiet and blank as she’s tended to.

“It’s alright.” The words leave taffy patches of heat in Pearl’s hair. Nothing really registers correctly – she’s turned to driftwood from the neck down. Dragged along for the ride as Rose coaxes her breathing to even out... to slow... “It’s alright. You’re okay. Shhhh… ”

A small part of Pearl feels she should grow more horrified by the moment – Rose is  _coddling_  her – but it’s so very small and so very quiet and this. It’s. 

It’s soothing. It’s so, so soothing. 

It feels so good. 

She steals a glimpse of Rose in the mirror, and she looks  _pained_ , like it’s  _her_ hand gutted open, like it’s  _her_ hurt, and something weak and sweetly captive in Pearl’s chest cries out for more.

The faucet squeaks off. The water stops, and Rose kisses her cheek, and murmurs something soft that Pearl can’t hear.

* * *

They’re back on the bed.

It’s narrow, which of course is fine for Pearl. Of course. She even has room to spare for a few of her comfort items. But those have been spirited away to the bottom of her closet in anticipation of company. (Lion is an exception; he stays on the bedside table.)

With Rose, though, they can only fit spooned up together. It feels good.  _Rose_  feels good. Her plush belly and chest, curving along Pearl’s back like this, it feels  _good,_ warm and soft and sunshine-with-skin. Tucked between Rose and the wall, Pearl feels comfortably cornered, and safe. 

And talking is easier. Even if she can no longer gauge Rose’s expressions in real time. She can't read her face as they speak, but Pearl feels much calmer like this. And anyway, she hadn’t been very good at that.

She pets a fingerpad along her thumb, testing. Since Rose cleaned and salved and bandaged it, the ache has all but vanished.

“Don’t pick,” she chides. Her voice is wheat-soft, sleepy. “I’ll have to kiss it all better, next.”

Pearl’s belly rolls in a pleasant way as her hand relaxes again. She nestles a lip between her teeth, and enjoys the feel of Rose’s chest against her back as she breathes. “I’m sorry if I scared you.”

“Don’t be sorry. It’s alright.”

”I didn’t even realize I was  _doing it_ , I was… just… ”

”Nervous?”

Breath seeps from Pearl in a sigh. She’s warm. “Nervous.”

”Nervous, still?”

Her head shakes ‘no’ as best it can against the pillow. “Feels like I could fall asleep.”

Strange. It’s difficult to imagine – to remember how she felt, ten minutes ago. She feels so relaxed now.

Rose hums. It’s a thinking sort of sound. She shifts, and resettles behind Pearl in a way that makes her breath eddy like a dream over her shell of ear. “A nap sounds like a good idea.”

Pearl’s head wiggles again and she shapes a small, distressed noise. It comes out sounding more petulant than anything. “I’d like to talk more.”

She feels like a spoiled pet. Making demands like this. Especially with the way Rose is cuddled up behind her, nestled rich and humming in her hair. Stroking her shoulder. Palming her hip. The attention is  _decadent_. It softens Pearl’s muscles and brain into some dumb, happy pudding, and the worst thing she can imagine through the comfortable haze is for Rose to stop touching her.

She mumbles, drowsy, “And… keep doing that, too?”

The touching stops. Rose stiffens, like she’s only now noticed her roaming hand.

Pearl instantly regrets mentioning it, but the moment passes, and the pampering continues. A relieved little whimper tries to crawl in her mouth. Fingers spread into a tender star over the sheer layer of her shirt, glowing warm against the skin underneath, and Pearl hears herself sigh as Rose asks, “This is okay?”

It is. It’s extremely okay. Pearl just hums, and tries to nod. The motion sinks her cheek an inch deeper into her pillow.

“You’re so thin.” Her palm trails the scant curve of Pearl’s waist – cupping, wandering – and her thumb lips curiously at the divot of her hip. It tickles, and Pearl squirms, and Rose _giggles_  low in her throat, and all the relaxation in the world can’t keep Pearl from hearing herself swallow. “Did  _any_  other fencer score a point on you?”

“Not… not many,” she admits. The false modesty is gone. She’s listing far too warm for any kind of guile, now. And that’s fine. Honestly. As long as Rose keeps touching her. “That made it all the harder when they did, though.”

Rose roves her fingers another lower, dizzying inch. She pauses; ponders. Then the palm flattens again into beautiful strokes over her hip.

“People should be gentle with themselves,” she says, soothing, and Pearl’s chest blooms with color. “Especially people like you.”

Pearl’s eyes flicker. Warm. She hears herself whisper: “It’s hard.”

“I know.” Careful hand along her hip, like she’s clay to shape. “I know.”

There were a number of reasons Pearl had given up fencing. She missed it, still does, but perfectionism means that dance takes enough of a toll on her. Part of her wants to tell Rose these things but given her next question, she seems to already know.

“Was piano the same?” 

Her palm presses into Pearl’s lower back. Kneads sweet into the muscle, there. A flash image – receiving a full-on massage from Rose – nearly pulls a groan from Pearl. She just barely tamps it down.  

“Almost.” She wets her lips, frowning when her tongue brushes her pillowcase. “My parents wanted me to stay with it, so it was the first to go.”

Rose makes a sympathetic sound. Something between a buzz and a sigh. Her hand trails back to Pearl’s front – hugs her waist. “They didn’t make things much easier, huh?”

Pearl just lets her hand fold over Rose’s. Squeezes, a little.

 _I’m going to kiss her,_  she decides, drunk and sudden.  _I need to kiss her._

She steels herself a moment more before turning, very carefully, so that they’re facing each other again. All nervousness comes pouring back like sheets of icewater. The happy pudding feeling and drowsy sunbeam languor both dissolve at a truly distressing pace, and Pearl’s stomach starts in again with knitting, and she almost wishes she’d stayed put.

 _God_. 

They’ve kissed before but they’ve never been in Pearl’s  _room,_  they haven’t been  _alone_  like this, in  _private_ , and Pearl is afraid to breathe too hard because Rose is right here in her  _bed_ and Pearl could count her eyelashes if she let herself.

They watch each other. A gaggle of voices pass by outside the window, talking and laughing, the sound coming from miles away.

“What are you thinking about?” Rose’s voice is low, milky coffee. Pearl can feel the gentle rumble in the lining of her tongue, they’re that close.

She’s so close.

And before Pearl can stop herself she blurts the stupid, artless truth in a clumsy mumble: “You’re really pretty.”

_Oh, God._

Rose’s eyes simmer laughter like dark hard candy but it’s kind. It’s kind, and inviting. It’s drawing Pearl inward... it wants Pearl to laugh, too.

Her hand reaches. Cool and smooth, the backs of her fingers trace Pearl, brushing from cheekbone to chin. The touch is barely there. It’s gentle, but Pearl’s breath snags, and the nerves arc in a velvet crush from the point of contact to the knot of sugar in her throat.

Pearl’s mind reels as Rose whispers back, “So are you.”

Something like panic bites in her.

“But,” Pearl starts – she’s licking her lips to part them enough to talk right, and she shifts as though to sit up, “Rose, _you_ , you’re just. Incredible. You’re  _stunning_ ,” she’s babbling but it’s hard to stop. It seems vital, it is of _vital importance_  that she make herself clear, right now - it’s critical that Rose understand this, everyone  _else_ can see it after all, “and talented, and – things just fall into place around you. You make things… fit together.  _You_ , I mean –  _you’re_  so put- _together_  –”

“Oh?”

Pearl’s mouth snaps shut at the sound. It’s an amused one. 

The hand stroking her cheek pauses, and detours to her nose to hang a gentle tweak there. Rose’s own is scrunched, playful. Her breath feathers in a laugh as she smiles, and sing-songs, “Have I got you fooled, too?”

But in the next breath Pearl just whispers “Yes,” and gazes at her in quiet, damning earnest.

Rose falters.

It’s the first time Pearl has ever, ever seen it happen. It's awful. The winning smile drains and her eyes go flat, like something's _wrong,_   like she’s listening for something far away.

Pearl's stomach freezes from the middle out and she squirms. Queasy, green panic. Hot _useless_ mouth. Should she sit up? “I’m so sorry, did –” Her jaw locks and she leans, shying her hand towards Rose’s again, “– did I upset you? I’m sorry, I didn’t –”

She’s interrupted by a forehead kiss: small and square, and firm as a sugarcube. Pearl’s tongue sticks fast to the roof of her mouth so sudden and thick that there’s only room for a whimper.

“You –” she drops a peck on Pearl’s cheek, completely blanking her brain, “– are correct –” a peck on her eyebrow, next, starry and tingling, “– you –” the next on her nose, “– ‘did  _not_ ’.”

One last kiss, dizzying, on the slope of her chin. “You  _didn’t_ upset me.”

Pearl’s skin has become some warm, mystic thing. Like Rose has pulled something from her body, crushed it barehanded, and peppered it over her like stardust.

“You’re wonderful.” Her hand cups along Pearl’s cheek. It feels cool against her strange, borrowed fever-skin. “You’re wonderful, Pearl.”

There’s no strength left in her. She feels the muscles in her waist snake, feeble, and she mumbles, “Again.”

“Call you wonderful? Or kiss?”

Pearl’s eyes shutter. Flicker warm. The question doesn’t make sense so she just whimpers, “Again?”

Rose does. She kisses her.

She kisses her, and murmurs more kindness into each touch – she’s giving Pearl another layer of skin, something perfect and thick to wrap her up within. And filling her, too, Pearl is filling up with something: molten autumn reds and Pacific foam and shards of chandelier all soaked in wine.

Pearl doesn’t know when they pull away but when they do, she’s flat on the bed, breathless. Rose is curled on her side, propped on her elbow – glowing gorgeous down at her.

“You have really nice legs.” Her voice is musing. She pets a slow, appreciative path down Pearl’s thigh. “Do you have any skirts?”

A few. Pearl tends to feel better in jeans, slacks. But she’s too hazed with the feeling of all this – _this_  – to clump together a reply.

Rose chides, humming, “I even made a special request last time, didn’t I?” and Pearl’s stomach bottoms out into her hips like she’s sinking from somewhere very high.

“I-I’ll.” Swallows. Sucks in a breath; clears her throat. “– r-remember next time?” She’s forgotten the rest of her line. Fuck. She’d rehearsed this one in the shower, too, but had not planned on having her tongue reeled belly-up in the back of her throat.

Rose smirks – she _smirks_. Every inch of her down to the curve of her eyebrow sings supple innuendo. She purrs, with good, terrible promise, “ _Already_  planning for next time?” and it’s like every pore in Pearl’s skin sucks in a breath.

Her hand doesn’t move from Pearl’s thigh but Rose shifts – slides one knee off the bed. Coming to her feet makes it easier to post her hands on either side of Pearl’s legs, and she does this, and the loop of ghost wire between breast and belly cinches so much tighter. It coils hot. It twists, pleased, at the feeling of being boxed-in again, plucking Pearl’s words from her chest: it leaves behind only eager, wriggling heat.

Pearl dredges for sense. Tries. She digs, and forces the words from herself, her mouth some empty foreign animal: “I l-like to… look ahead…”

“Look now.”

The words come as command and croon both. Rose’s eyes brook no argument. Pearl wilts. 

“Look. I’m right here, Pearl.”

Her hands are on either side of Pearl’s legs and they squeeze the outer curve of thigh as she rumbles, gorgeous: “Look at me.”

Pearl does. She has to.

She has to do many, many things. She has to coach her chest to swell and fall in tempo – she has to tame the way her eyes want to swim. But at the top of the list is to be careful, Pearl must be very,  _very_ careful, because one more of those smirks from Rose and she may very well come in her jeans. 

Her heart thuds thick and dumb in her chest as something tugs at her button and fly – Rose’s thumb – and fingers tease the frail dip of her navel as Rose asks, quiet, “Yes?”

Yes. God.

_God, yes._

Pearl bridges in helpless, mute approval, and Rose croons.

It’s nothing to tug her jeans down her hipless legs and she’s left in just powder blue panties, feeling at the same time very small yet far too gangly and long to be quite human. It’s suddenly difficult to know where to put herself. She sits there like an awkward appliance with her knees pulled in, dividing herself from Rose, and is struck with a crush of anxiety as sharp and abrupt as a barked shin: whether or not to let her thighs fall open.

She’s past embarrassment about how much she wants Rose. She’s past embarrassment about how much Rose knows it. So she should stop thinking about it.

Just. Stop thinking. Thinking had hardly helped  _at all_  so far, and Pearl. She.

Pearl needs. 

_I need to kiss her._

Rose turns, considerately folding the jeans and placing them on the dresser, and Pearl sinks her teeth into her lip fierce enough to dent and lets her knees fall open in plaintive invitation.

Rose turns back: freezes. Her face is inscrutable. A horrible, yawning pause stretches before she reaches over – so careful, so gentle – to bookend Pearl’s knees between her hands.

Her thumbs flicker; soothe.

Then she presses them closed.

 _Oh, God._  Pearl wants to disintegrate into the sheets. God. God. She indulges just a moment in letting her mortification show before rearranging her face into something brave and polite.

 _God._  “I’m sorry i-if I’m making you uncomfortable.” She licks her lips. “W… would it be better if…”

But Rose just keeps smiling, and guides Pearl’s closed knees downward – coaxes them flat to the mattress. Pearl’s heart stops.

It stops, and then skins itself into butcherpaper layers as Rose begins to crawl up over her. Straddle her.

She _pours_ herself over her. Over Pearl.

Her dress curtains up along her thighs as she settles herself on Pearl’s bare legs, and the shock of skin-to-skin is so good it _hurts_ , a ripe coral ache that splits her up the middle.

Pearl reels back into her pillow.

“You’ve done an awful lot of apologizing today.” A witch’s hand steals beneath the lip of Pearl’s shirt, skimming warm along her belly. It summons to her mouth a wounded sound. “No more of that.”

Rose settles herself fully and the whining stray in Pearl’s chest is back. Pearl wants to whine, too. She tames the urge but forgets to rein in the rest of herself, and Pearl’s hips bridge upwards again – just barely, but enough for Rose to notice.

“Am I too heavy? Here, I can –” She begins to shift aside and Pearl seizes her by the hips, far too hard, and tries to cry out  _“No!”_  but all that will come is a crumbled whimper.

_God, please._

Pearl fires a glance at her – expecting shock, or disgust, or – but no, Rose’s hand is on her cheek. Her thumb smooths the skin there. “Alright. Don’t worry.”

The touch is like waking up from someone else’s dream and Pearl leans into it, trembling. Rose’s warmth and weight are the best parts of stained glass and summer glow and mouthfeel of caramel cream and Pearl doesn’t feel her eyes sliding closed until Rose’s thumb on her cheek simmers them open again, and Pearl’s ribcage blooms and all the air leaves her, because Rose’s sundress is gone: long pulled off over her head, maybe, and she’s heartbreakingly soft and gorgeous and when she says “I want to kiss you, Pearl,” her eyes are pleading, she’s  _pleading,_ “Please let me.”

The words are barely out before Pearl is struggling upright, she’s trembling, she’s kissing Rose. She’s kissing Rose with her fingers curled clawlike and shaking in the sheets and her nose is dovetailed against her cheek like there’s no other place for it. 

She's soft. She’s so soft. 

Rose feathers her round of bottom lip along the seam of Pearl’s mouth and it’s  _soft_ , it’s gentle as cream just  _like_  Rose, just like the rest of her, and what a wonder that all it takes is a careful piece of flesh to cradle Pearl entire.

She loses time, there: Rose is filling her with something greedy and  _perfect_  and drinking it out of her again and Pearl is making these _sounds_ , she knows – she can hear herself, and the wash of heat she feels has not an ounce of shame to it – and Rose’s hands brace her upright as she magicks Pearl’s shirt off and away. 

She doesn’t fold it like the jeans. No. No, it’s tossed aside, and she presses Pearl back into the bed.

“You’re so  _thin_ ,” she says again, wondering. The murmur does candyshop things to Pearl’s neck, a wave she swallows a shiver against as Rose continues to marvel. Her voice comes out low and good with a faint breath of laughter to it: “I’m almost afraid of breaking you.”

Rose could break her if she wanted. Pearl would break, if she wanted.

She begins to move down Pearl’s body and the reality of this,  _this,_ Rose is going to touch her – it. It’s. The air no longer works correctly. Pearl pulls in full, ripe breaths, and pushes them out – and pulls them in again – but none of them stay in her right, it’s not working, the stray’s stealing it away.

The bare curve of Rose’s belly brushes plush along Pearl’s thighs before settling, there, and her chest seizes like a fist of God and she feels like crying. The wall and ceiling are swimming behind her like a syrup mirage, and her hair spills like champagne as she moves along Pearl’s body and Rose:  _Rose:_  her skin is flushed February pink, she’s slowing herself to a heatwave hum, she feels so terribly, achingly good on top of Pearl.

She’s doing terrible, good things to Pearl. Her glowing mouth is kissing tastes over her swoop of collar, her sinewed neck, her nonexistent breasts. She gambles God and looks down over her reedy chest to see Rose smiling hazy kisses into her side, heedless of the piano key ribs pulling her skin screamingly thin, taut, of the heart murdering blows inside her like a war drum, tight, with each ridiculous pile of breath she fails to make use of.

“You okay?” She licks her lips and something chains itself inside Pearl’s chest. For a moment it feels like Rose’s hips are rolling – that she’s moving against Pearl, taking pleasure from her – but she’s only sitting up, instead, and Pearl feels loss and relief both.

Rose’s palm soothes over Pearl’s side. “Shhh… Deep breaths.” 

Pearl does. She tries.

She watches Rose do the same. Her chest moves as she pulls in air, too, more deeply than before, and – oh, that’s – her breasts, that – Pearl whimpers. Rose’s breasts are, flushed, too.

“Do you want to feel?”

Pearl's chin wavers in a nod, drunken, and Rose bows her chest outward to reach behind herself. Her bra slides from her shoulder onto the floor and Pearl groans, “R- _Rose_ –”

“Shhh…” 

Mindful of her thumb, Rose takes up Pearl’s wrists –  _her_  hands are shaking, too, she can feel, not by much but they  _are_  – and every ounce of Pearl surrenders at the knowledge that Rose wants this, too. Rose wants her, too. Rose wants her to touch her and she does. God.

God, she does.

Pearl’s long, long, pianist fingers come up short of covering them and they’re  _soft_ , they’re ribbed with brushstrokes of stretchmarks and Rose makes a little gasping _morsel_ of a sound when Pearl is suddenly kissing them, tracing them gently with her tongue, lips pursed prayerful. Pearl kneads and Rose  _moans_  and the sound alone has Pearl _tightening_  and she can feel her eyes roll back _-_

She whimpers into Rose’s breasts and soft arms come to cradle her head. Fingers ruffle her hair – petting, stroking – and Pearl can hear encouraging little murmurs when she takes a nipple in her mouth.  Rose says something Pearl fails to hear, half-muffled with the arms around her ears,  but it sounds approving, and when she suckles and swirls her tongue and lets her teeth scrape she feels Rose’s hips  _roll_  against her, and – and that –

She must have missed a notch of time because Rose pulls away and Pearl’s flat on the pillows again. Things are happening faster, now. Her body hums. Drunk. She may have come, already. Already. Maybe?  

She’s sinking into something and details are gone and it’s so blindingly, helplessly good.

“Oh, sweetheart.” 

There’s pressure as Rose kisses her. But Pearl’s mouth won’t make the right shape. 

“You can’t take much more of this, can you?”

She makes a lost sound as she’s kissed again.

Time spills and something rustles but Pearl’s nervous system is too addled – she can’t move to see – she’s trying to tame her lungs still when soft fingers part her, and that simple contact brings a pleasure so piercing and clean that it paralyzes. 

Her world shifts by degrees.

“Pearl, _oh_  – ”

The brush of breath makes her _twitch_ and she cries out: weak and new. 

“Shhh… I’ve got you.”

 _You do_ , she wants to say, to tell Rose, _You have me. You have me._  

She hasn’t the breath or the presence of mind to say any of what she would –  Pearl is trying and failing to make sense of what’s happening: trying to filter exactly what she’s feeling to Rose as she smooths her thumbs over the bowl of Pearl’s hips: while the stray in her throat tries to tell her  _She’s making you some new creature, Pearl – she’s coring you like fruit – every part she touches is hollowing itself to make room for what she wants of you – she’s carving you from wood, she’s curving you just right, she’s curing you strong and sealing you up to make your ribs watertight – she’s steering you somewhere strange and she’s bailing the sea the wrong way – she’s filling you up, she’s sinking you deep and she’s smiling the whole time – and it’s so **good** , Pearl – it’s so good, but you’re afraid – afraid, Pearl, you’re  **frightened**  – you’ve never felt this and you’re frightened._

But Pearl doesn’t hear and the words don’t come. They wash and dim, they go away, and all that Pearl can hear or have to make is a choked sob – “So  _good_ , R-Rose,” – and when the touch within her pulls just perfect, just right, Pearl sinks sweet and half-curls into helplessness: half-beached in a soft shelf of shore: grateful salt and tempered arch and gorgeous, coarse joy. 

But a strange breaker wave washes in, too – cups her gentle; lifts her whole – and pulls her out again.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: I’d thought that a college AU would be a good way to write a healthy, even-keeled relationship between Pearl and Rose, but better luck next time? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> The rustling sound was Rose unwrapping a dental dam, because she is a responsible and sexually active young adult. Pearl didn’t last long enough for her to use it much, though.
> 
> My original plan was to have Lapis interrupt them before they got too far, but after 6,000 words of build-up it just felt cruel. (To Pearl and readers both.)
> 
> I may continue this in the future, but not as another chapter -- it'll be a loose continuation. Involving sexting.


End file.
